Rhyme TimeOh yeah.

One, Two Button My Shoe

“We seem to be born liking sounds that match.” (Vendler)

Purpose of rhyme:Pleasant to hearConclusivenessSense of endingFacilitate memorizationEstablish structureCreate symmetry

•Simplest rhymes are those that are same parts of speech.

• Immediately you should question two words that are matched by rhyme, but not in any other way.

• Used to make a reader uncomfortable or to indicate something is off.

Day & Weigh (noun and verb)

* Semantically speaking, most satisfactory rhymes are the ones in which the two rhyming words have some meaning-relation to each other.

High & Sky

Cat & Hat (noun and noun)

Think like a Formalist.What do the parts of speech themselves imply…

Note: Pay attention to syllables. They in themselves create different effects (i.e. monosyllable vs. disyllable vs. trisyllables)

End Rhyme Rhyming of the final words of lines in a poem.

Infant Sorrow, William Blake

My mother groaned, my father wept – (A)

Into the dangerous world I leapt, (A)

Helpless, naked piping loud, (B)

Like a fiend hid in a cloud. (B)

The lines do not need to be consecutive for the rhyme to be classified as end.

On Gut, Ben JohnsonGut eats all day, and lechers all night; (A)So all his meat he tasteth over twice; (B)And, striving so to double his delight, (A)He makes himself a thoroughfare of vice.(B)

Internal Rhyme

Rhyming of two words within the same line of poetry.

Annabel Lee, Edgar Allan PoeFor the moon never beams without bringing me

dreamsOf the beautiful Annabel Lee; And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyesOf the beautiful Annabel Lee;And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

Slant Rhymes (sometimes called imperfect, partial, near, oblique, off etc.)

Use of words that do not exactly rhyme, but utilize similar sound.

Created using assonance (“heart” and “star”) or consonance

(“walk” and “milk”)

Slant rhyme is a technique perhaps more in tune with the uncertainties of the modern age than strong rhyme.

Dejection, William Butler YeatsWhen have I last looked onThe round green eyes and the long wavering bodiesOf the dark leopards of the moon?All the wild witches, those most noble ladies,

Digging, Seamus Heaney 

 Between my finger and my thumb      The squat pen rests; snug as a gun 

Rich Rhymes

Rhyme using two different words that happen to sound the same (i.e. homonyms) – for example “days” and “daze”

The following example – a triple rich rhyme:

A First Attempt in Rhyme, Thomas Hood

      Partake the fire divine that burns,      In Milton, Pope, and Scottish Burns,      Who sang his native braes and burns. 

Eye Rhymes

The opening four lines of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18, for example, go :   

      Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?      Thou art more lovely and more temperate:      Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,      And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:   

Here, “temperate” and “date” look as though they rhyme, but few readers would pronounce “temperate” in a way that rhymes with "date.”

Beware that pronunciations can drift over time and that rhymes can end up as eye rhymes when they were originally full rhymes (and vice versa). 

Rhyme on words that look the same but which are actually pronounced differently – for example “bough” and “rough”.

Identical Rhymes

Because I Could not Stop for Death, Emily Dickinson

      We paused before a House that seemed       A Swelling of the Ground— The Roof was scarcely visible—       The Cornice—in the Ground— 

 

Rhyme that simply uses the same word twice.

Now the million dollar

question: Why would a formalist be so concerned

with rhyme? Consider how the meaning of a poem can be different if end rhyme

is utilized over slant or internal over eye. Why does this matter?